With all of the chatter about bloggers taking payola from politicians, something that
My fears of such a tyranny [socialist central planning] will seem to the Professor either insincere or pusillanimous. For him the danger is all in the opposite direction, in the chaotic selfishness of individualism. I must try to explain why I fear more the disciplined cruelty of some ideological oligarchy. The Professor has his own explanation of this; he thinks that I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I “stand to lose by social change”. And indeed it would be hard for me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a concentration camp. I might add that it would likewise be easy for the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the highest rank of an omnicompetent oligarchy. That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views still remain to be considered on their merits.
The leftists who were paid by Howard Dean’s campaign in the expectation of favorable coverage and the conservatives whom John Thune’s Senatorial campaign subsidized are in the business of presenting arguments for particular ideological viewpoints. They had plenty of motives for supporting their preferred candidates, and the mere fact of their choices was uninteresting. Does anybody but (perhaps) his mother care whom Markos “Screw ’em” Zuniga favors for any office, except to the extent that he can present reasons (or what pass for reasons in the strange Daily Kos universe) why others ought to agree with him?
There is, of course, a distinction between purveyors of opinion, who stand and fall by the logic and evidence that they adduce, and reporters of news, whose role is to provide information. Readers are rarely in a position to check whether the newspaper account of an event accurately reflects the facts. They either trust or don’t trust the reporter, and judgments about his credibility depend a great deal on perceptions of his motives.
That is why political bias (or, as CBS prefers the characterize it, gross incompetence) at a television network is an important issue and the Dean campaign’s generosity to a couple of anti-American zealots isn’t.
Does it suddenly occur to you that my real motive for holding news media and bloggers to different standards may be that I hope, like Professor Bainbridge and Iowahawk, to start collecting bundles of cash from the White House? Or am I, as Loony Left site Democrats.com “discovered” long ago, already a front for greedy corporate interests? Ah, but that would be telling. Who am I to unearth the dark secrets of the blogosphere?
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